☆ Connolly: price pressures, media bias are clouding out a moment of progress and prosperity
What does this November’s election say about which way California and the nation are headed? As part of an Opportunity Now exclusive series on this November’s election, SV Log Cabin Republicans President Shane Patrick Connolly says that despite many reasons for optimism, acute price pressures and media bias weigh on voters and will favor the out-of-office party.
Fundamentally, our nation is strong and strengthening from the economy to defense to public safety. Some tariffs have eased, with tariffs cut on $30 billion worth of goods coming from China in the wake of the Trump-Xi meeting in DC, massive investment is being made AI (now SI?) infrastructure, in re-onshoring of strategic sectors including steel making, autos, pharmaceuticals. Speaking of pharmaceuticals, drug prices on key medications are down. Billions in fraud in our social safety net programs is being rooted out. Inflation remains fairly low, but not as low as before the Iran action. Oil is again flowing at a steady pace through the Strait of Hormuz, with Iran's IRGC hamstrung by the serious degradation of their military's offensive capabilities, their inability to generate hard cash from oil sales, internal unrest, a currency at 2.5 million/1 U.S. dollar, and their money frozen even in allied China. Fentanyl deaths dropped another 20% last year and the importation of illegal narcotics has been made more difficult with changes in state leadership in parts of Central and South America leadership. Murder rates have been driven down to a 100-year low and we've had zero illegal entrants reported in several months, and in the places where the most deportations (voluntary and otherwise) have been reported, rent prices have been dropping.
That's a lot of great news, so why do we hear of dissatisfaction from the electorate? Part of this is a function of the overwhelmingly negative coverage afforded the conservative-leaning administrations and politicians and the kid-glove treatment afforded the left. This coverage gets picked up and repeated, ad nauseum, across the social platforms where your average American now gets his or her news. Additionally, and perhaps more importantly, even though we have fewer people in poverty now than in many years, the immediate concerns of high gas prices, health insurance costs that continue to grow because of the structural shortcomings of the ACA, and consumers feeling little relief at the grocery store from the now-embedded step-function inflation of the prior administration, may have voters feeling as if their personal fortunes are not as positive as they may be in real terms and relative to other nations. If people aren't feeling optimistic at voting time, the benefit accrues to the party out of power. In California this could mean some upside for right-of-center candidates, and, nationally, the negative vibes may benefit those running left-of-center.
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